But now his cousin, Patricia Armani da Silva, is challenging the decision not to prosecute anyone for his murder in the European Court of Human Rights.

She says the UK breached his human rights by failing to bring criminal charges against anyone involved - and lawyers will put the family's case before judges later on Wednesday.

Undercover police reportedly began following Mr De Menezes because they thought he looked like one of the bombers who was on the run. He also lived in a flat that shared a communal entrance with another person linked to the suspect.

Two officers, trained in shooting suspected suicide bombers, followed him into the station where he was surrounded, pinned down and shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.

At the time, Jack Straw, the-then Foreign Secretary, and Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, expressed their "deep regret" for Mr de Menezes' death but insisted a shoot-to-kill policy for suspected suicide bombers would remain in place.

His killing followed the deaths of 52 people in four explosions on the London Underground two weeks earlier.